Integrating community engagement and service delivery – pointers to good practice Contents

Part 1: Introduction 3 Part 2: The case for engagement 4 Part 3: Overview 5 Part 4: Some key ingredients 6 Part 5: The challenge ahead 20 Acknowledgements 21 Part 1: Introduction

This guide aims to help local authorities ensure that the results of their community engagement processes (that is, what people say) are built into their service plans and the ways that they deliver services. It completes the circle of finding out what communities think, feeding back and then acting on it. It builds on the two empowerment mapping tools already available: How strong is your neighbourhood? A mapping tool for communities and How strong are your neighbourhoods? A mapping tool for local authorities and their partners. A guide on Developing a neighbourhood empowerment plan is also available; this provides a template to produce a plan based on the outcomes of the two empowerment mapping tools.

This guide has been developed by Social Regeneration Consultants (SRC) for Local Government Improvement and Development with input from members of the Network of Empowering Authorities (NEA). It draws heavily on case study material provided by a range of councils who have outlined their approach to connecting the views of communities to service planning and delivery. Part 2: The case for engagement

Whilst councils have a statutory Duty to Involve there are other compelling reasons why councils and their partners should engage with, involve and seek to empower their communities and these are now well documented.¹

The present Government’s ambitions to strengthen the role of individual citizens and communities and decrease the role of the state are also highly relevant. Its ideas are wrapped up in the concept of the ‘big society’ and include proposals related to services, such as a ‘community right to buy’ threatened amenities, a right to bid to run services and giving parents the right to run schools. This agenda will be put in place at the same time as severe and prolonged reductions in public sector budgets, which will have a significant impact on the capacity of local authorities and other services as well as the community and voluntary sectors.

For all councils this will be a major challenge but also an opportunity. Ways to improve how they make use of the results from community engagement will be under greater scrutiny. Councils will have an even more pressing imperative to draw on the knowledge and experiences of residents in improving the services they provide and in making them more tailored to local priorities. The business case for engagement is strong, not least in ensuring that councils deliver better, more effective and efficient services, based on what residents and communities want, so improving the value for money they offer. Conversely, not involving communities can be costly and lead to poorer services.

It is clear that councils that develop a meaningful dialogue with their residents, in good times and in difficult ones, find community engagement and empowerment saves them time and money, creating more satisfied communities.

Elected members have a central role to play in finding out what local residents want and in ensuring this affects the way services are delivered. By getting people involved, councillors increase their accountability to, and credibility with, local communities, strengthening the democratic process.

¹ Local Government Improvement and Development (formerly IDeA) (2010): Community Empowerment: what is it and where is it going? Local Government Improvement and Development (2009): The consequences of not empowering communities Local Government Improvement and Development (2010): The benefits of investing in community empowerment Involve (2005): The true costs of public participation Involve (2010): Talking for a change These pointers to good practice are written for councils. They draw on the experience and innovative work of a number of councils across the country. Examples are provided of how they are approaching the challenge of ensuring that what local people say directly influences service planning and delivery.

The guide outlines some of the key ingredients that can help lay a foundation for responsive service planning and delivery influenced by the priorities and genuine needs of local people. This list is not exhaustive but it does provide a starting point to encourage councils to reflect on their own approach and consider their own strengths and areas for development. The case studies outlined demonstrate how councils are putting some of the ingredients into practice and provide examples of specific approaches. Not all of these councils are mixing all the ingredients together – many have only some ingredients in their bowl – and none would say that what they are doing is perfect! But there is some excellent practice to learn from and apply.

The case studies reflect both a diversity of organisational structures and differing local circumstances. Centrally managed processes exist alongside a range of service-based activities. The pointers to good practice are intended to apply to both levels - at a corporate level within a council and to specific service areas, focusing on activities rather than strategies and policies.

It is clear that, in many areas, communities have a tangible influence and that locally determined priorities are acted upon. The challenge for councils is then to look at ways of ensuring local people have a greater degree of control over the way services are managed and provided and the way that resources are deployed over time.

The complex and more strategic nature of some of the issues facing local authorities can only be addressed by working closely with partner organisations and this is well recognised by councils. Local strategic partnerships have played an important role in sharing information on, and responding to, these issues. In some places area-based partnership structures are being created alongside existing council structures to mobilise a more effective response to area-wide problems that cut across services and organisations. Part 4: Some key ingredients

Key ingredients

• An organisational culture where councillors, directors, service managers and frontline staff value engagement.

• A locally-based planning mechanism that feeds into service planning.

• An identifiable staff resource to link community planning to operational management.

• An accessible way for residents to raise and track issues of concern, demonstrating how services have responded to their influence.

• A strong message within corporately produced guidance on service planning.

• A commitment to using the experience from everyday transactions (engagement between frontline staff and those who use services) to help shape those services.

• An openness to considering and developing new ways to deliver services.

4.1 An organisational culture that values engagement

An organisation that understands and acknowledges the value of resident and community engagement will be prepared to embrace its implications. The statutory requirement plus a clearly documented case for engagement provide a foundation to see the possible benefits. In addition political and managerial commitment and leadership provide the bedrock for creating a culture that will embrace engagement and lead to change. Without this commitment it will prove harder for communities to ensure that service planning takes local priorities on board and involves them. West Berkshire Council is strongly committed to the community-led planning process and its outcomes, it is ‘part of the council’s lifeblood’. The chief executive has provided strong leadership in committing the council to actively supporting the development and implementation of community-led plans at parish level (the local government unit considered to be most easily recognised by residents). Senior managers and officers throughout the organisation, along with elected members, have demonstrated a level of commitment that has survived a change of political leadership. Community-led planning has a high profile in the council (it was awarded Beacon Status for parish planning in 2006) and is used to build the council’s reputation with its communities. The council has established and funded a process for the development of local plans and, as importantly, has demonstrated a commitment to ensuring that the outcomes of this process impact on service planning and that community priorities are translated into action. Major issues arising from newly developed plans are collated and presented to an annual community planning conference chaired by the chief executive.

Wiltshire Council has a culture that publicly recognises the value of engagement. In seeking unitary status a strong case was made for working closely with Wiltshire’s local communities through governance arrangements that would empower local councillors to get more people involved and able to influence decisions affecting their lives. Through an extensive communications strategy there has been a very public expression of a political commitment to ensure that the county is one ‘where everybody matters’. This commitment is reflected at the top level in the council with community engagement and local governance established as a major corporate initiative. It is also contained within corporate guidance to senior managers. Principles for service directors to take into account in service design explicitly include the community dimension. Service priorities and plans are expected to take into account local priorities, issues and concerns identified by area boards in their work with the community area partnerships, through community area debates and community area plans.

Some pointers

- Strong and overt leadership from councillors and senior managers will create an environment in which engagement is seen to be valued.
- Given such an environment councils can become ever more ambitious in their commitment to making sure the results of engagement activity impacts on the way they do business.
- Regular communication channels with both staff and communities can be used to reinforce this message. 4.2 A locally-based planning mechanism that feeds into service planning

Many councils have governance arrangements in place that incorporate some type of geographically defined neighbourhood or area committee structure. Such arrangements will usually include a remit for the production of local plans. The plans will be the result of local engagement activity and will attempt to reflect community priorities. People will perceive these structures and planning arrangements as being successful if they can see visible changes being made in their area based on the concerns they have expressed.

The geographical level at which local planning takes place will vary according to local circumstances.

Braintree District Council supports the production of parish plans, which are produced at a local level with a high degree of community inclusion and with the full involvement of parish councils. The plans play an important role in governance at a local level as well as providing information that is useful to the council in the planning and delivery of its services. The plans are dependent on volunteer involvement and take between 18 months and three years to produce. An estimated 50 per cent of actions included are things that communities can do for themselves.

To link parish plans more directly to statutory plans and the delivery of services the council set up the Parish Plans Support Group in 2008, which sits alongside three member-led local committees. The remit of this joint member/officer support group is to enable ward members to work more closely with community groups in the production of parish and neighbourhood plans and to integrate those actions that require assistance into business planning and service delivery systems.

The work of this group has been found to be highly effective in strengthening the links between the different levels of plans within the council and in ensuring that the aspirations expressed in parish plans are deliverable. It is now developing its role by focusing on improving the quality of the action plans contained within parish plans. The support group arranges for community groups to meet face to face with service providers to look at possible solutions to local issues. This has been found to be of great benefit to both services and residents.

A guide for community groups is planned for late 2010 detailing the support available throughout the process of preparing a plan and the linkages between the action plan and delivery of council services. In West Berkshire 65 per cent of parishes now have a plan. Parish councils are involved in their production but do not usually take the lead role.

Early plans were mixed in nature but over time a process has developed that provides a consistent framework, promotes better engagement at local level, offers guidance and support to communities, tracks activity against objectives and ensures both quality and deliverability.

A key element within this process is the support of a development worker from the Community Council for Berkshire (CCB). This post is funded through a service level agreement, guaranteeing that support is available without the council being seen as directing the process. The worker makes contact with the parish; a steering group is established following consultation with the wider community; a draft plan is produced by the group and issues and solutions identified.

An important feature of the process is the help that is made available through regular surgery sessions and ‘meet the experts’ events hosted by the council. Informal discussion at this stage can help shape the plan more realistically before expectations become unmanageable. This promotes confidence that the final plan is deliverable.

The officer resource provided to support this process is focused on ensuring service cooperation. The draft plan is examined formally by the council’s principal policy officer who liaises with relevant departments, a vital role in ensuring that senior level consideration and feedback are given. The draft provides an opportunity for heads of service to see what parishes are looking for, which, in turn, can inform service planning and decisions about the use of resources.

The significance given to parish plans means that they are taken seriously and when finalised, each plan goes through a formal endorsement process.

West Berkshire sets aside capital funding of £60,000 each year. Parishes can bid through their plans for grants. This has proved an important kick-start to get plans developed and to achieve ‘quick wins’.

The main impact on service delivery has been in highways, a particularly responsive service. The council uses information on roads and highways from parish plans to inform decisions on their work programme and assist in setting priorities for the district as a whole. The council’s Arts and Leisure Team also acts directly on the information channelled through young people’s Speak Out events, which are often an integral part of the parish planning process. Salford City Council also has an established system for community planning. Community committees - made up of representatives of the local community, voluntary organisations in an area and ward councillors - generate a community action plan that expresses local priorities. These plans are used to inform the business planning of the council.

Community committees also decide on the use of local budgets to achieve priorities. £1 million is devolved down to neighbourhoods each year. Some of these committees use participatory budgeting; others allocate the money via task groups. Services can be commissioned from providers in any sector.

More recently, Salford Council has moved to strengthen these arrangements and tackle issues across agency boundaries. As a result eight neighbourhood partnership boards have been created. These boards are made up of local councillors, senior officers from the council, health trust, police and other key service providers as well as community committee representatives. Their stated objective is two-fold - to assist community committees to develop a vision for their neighbourhoods, and to seek improvements in service delivery in line with agreed community and public service priorities. The boards do this by bringing together performance information from their agencies to promote a shared understanding of progress in the neighbourhood, which is then reviewed critically and proposals for change are made. Some councils not only devolve budgets to area-based committees but have taken steps to make services accountable through local planning structures.

**Wiltshire Council** has moved down this route. A pivotal change has been the setting up in June 2009 of 18 area boards, which have provided an enhanced capacity for local planning. They have now become a powerful model and form part of the council’s constitution.

Every service area of the council is accountable through the boards (with the exception of planning), powers have been devolved to make decisions locally and funding has been delegated (£4.5 million over two years).

The aim of the area boards is to encourage residents to discuss issues with their local councillors so that their views are taken into account when making decisions. Police, fire and rescue services and National Health Service (NHS) Wiltshire also play an active part, together with town and parish councils and members of the local community area partnerships. On a rotating basis, members of the council’s cabinet will attend board meetings and make sure that communities can feed in concerns about how the council’s policies are working for them. Attendance is good, with an average of 65 people at meetings.

In developing local devolution, the council has put time and money into making the boards a success and has established a dedicated team. There is a commitment from all council services and other key groups such as neighbourhood policing teams to work closely with the boards. Intelligence across agencies and council departments is gathered and presented using commonly defined boundaries, allowing an in-depth focus on communities living in the area covered by the board. Newcastle City Council has moved a step further into local management of services with the long established ward committees now controlling part of the council’s labour force.

The ward is seen as the most credible unit of governance for service delivery and democratic accountability in the city; the council has worked with forms of ward committees since the 1970s. 26 committees exist, made up of ward councillors with support from a full time officer. They meet frequently and councillors play a key part in them, offering a very tangible role for non-executive members.

Ward committees have access to service departments and senior managers and control delegated funds for use within their ward. Each year the committees make decisions on almost £4 million of spending.

The committees have been given a higher profile in recent years, directly monitoring the performance of neighbourhood response units that are responsible for environmental services. Managers report to the committees and residents are able to directly influence the way that the teams deliver services.

The ward is also the unit for local planning. Each ward has a plan developed in association with the community, setting out local priorities and standards. The plans will soon be supported by neighbourhood charters which have been piloted in the city and are due to be launched in autumn 2010. These charters will be implemented and monitored by the ward committees and mainly cover local authority, police and environmental services. Communities have been consulted in drawing up the charters.

At a neighbourhood level there will be ‘mini charters’ to reflect priority issues in the communities identified (148 neighbourhoods in total across the city). The council’s data and intelligence system drills down to this level. Councils will often operate area planning mechanisms alongside service-based engagement and planning activity. This presents a challenge for authorities to ensure that these processes are ‘joined up’ and that both add value for residents.

**North Tyneside Council** uses its area forums as its primary mechanism to ensure local views influence service planning and delivery. For example, the council has allocated £250,000 to each of its four area forums to make recommendations for spend on roads and pavements. Ideas are sought through the ‘ideas form’, started in March 2010 and distributed to households in each forum area prior to meetings, as well as from those attending forum meetings. Priorities for roads and pavement improvements are discussed and analysed and a priority list for the area drawn up. Ward councillors meet after the analysis has been done and decide on which improvements to recommend to the mayor and cabinet (North Tyneside works to an elected mayor model). To date more than 25 improvement recommendations have been accepted. A similar process is in place for spend on local environmental improvement projects such as planting, wall repairs and skip days.

The work of area forums sits alongside a range of well established service-based engagement activities within the council. For example **North Tyneside Homes**, the council’s housing service, has in place a clear pathway for tenants to influence service delivery.

Information on the service is collected in a number of ways - consultation exercises, mystery shopping, complaints, performance data – and issues arising are fed into one of 14 service development groups; borough-wide service-based groups based on issues such as repairs and allocations. The profiles of these groups are regularly monitored and targets set to increase under-represented sections of the population.

The groups have been successful in ensuring that the housing service’s plans are influenced by tenants’ priorities. The groups work up proposals based on the issues that come in, consult on ideas and agree final improvements with officers. These are then built into the service’s improvement plans for the following year or implemented immediately if it is possible to do so.

All of the groups are involved in monitoring performance. For example, tenants on the repairs panel discussed repairs performance in 2009/10, set targets for improvement in 2010/11 and are now monitoring these at their meetings. In addition one of the 14 groups, the Involvement Group, specifically monitors tenant involvement in improving services and has set targets for improving involvement that are tracked every three months.

A ‘you said, we did’ column is included in the regularly produced magazine for tenants. The groups present each year to four area-based events and refresh priorities with tenants. A more recent development is the setting up of an overview panel that is developing a scrutiny role across the service, including spending priorities and reinvestment. Some pointers

• It is important to demonstrate to both council officers and residents alike that community-led planning can be a ‘win-win’ process. It offers the opportunity for officers to put across their priorities and potential constraints to communities as well as providing the opportunity for local people to present their views on which issues are most important to them and to suggest other ways that services could be delivered.

• Having local plans does not, in itself, guarantee more responsive service planning. It is only one piece of the jigsaw. But supporting the production of such plans does help strengthen the council’s reputation with its communities and build relationships between officers and local residents. It makes the most of the local knowledge, time and other resources that residents bring to the process and which can yield a level of detail and rate of response that would otherwise be difficult for a council to achieve.

• A matching of aspirations is beneficial to both residents and councils. Services need to be honest about available resources and neighbourhoods more aware of the constraints within which councils operate.

• A key success factor in ensuring local planning arrangements have an impact is to identify a resource within the council that will provide a direct link between the community planning process and operational managers. This officer can act as a broker between the local groups and services and help facilitate a resolution if issues arise in implementing local action plans.

• Use of a formal but not overly restrictive council process for adoption of local plans encourages communities and reassures them that their views are being taken seriously.

• The delegation of budgets to local committees can provide a degree of control over resources by communities. A bolder step is to devolve management of some key services that impact directly on neighbourhoods, giving local people a mechanism to more directly influence the way those services are delivered in their areas.

• Residents and user groups need to be able to be independent and confident in their approach to managing devolved responsibilities. Identifying and protecting resources for capacity building is an important part of the jigsaw.

• Working on local plans can bring together different service providers, increasing cross organisational working to meet the needs of the community. This can increase effectiveness and deliver efficiencies when it means that people’s contributions are taken on board following a single engagement, so avoiding consultation fatigue. 4.3 An accessible way for residents to raise and track issues of concern

There are many ways in which residents can raise issues of concern with their council. Some of these have been touched on in section 2. Community engagement programmes will use a variety of approaches and techniques to maximise input from their target populations. These have been well documented elsewhere.²

Producing plans to address local issues more effectively is a useful first step. Residents can then see that those issues they are concerned about have been identified.

Beyond this, residents also require a mechanism that allows them to be reassured that these issues have not got lost and that they are being acted upon by their council (and its partners where appropriate). Such a mechanism can take different forms but it needs to be made known to residents and be easily accessed.

People raise issues in a variety of ways with Newcastle City Council, including through an online ‘your views matter’ submission. This links to an interactive ward website to enable residents to raise queries and track responses. Each issue raised is included as a matter of local concern, is allocated an individual reference number and reviewed by the relevant ward committee and supporting officers. It is then allocated to an individual council officer and the response is monitored by the committee.

Issues can also be registered in writing or by telephone. Residents are informed of when the next ward committee papers will appear so they can see that their issue is included on the agenda – matters of local concern are a standing item.

To encourage local residents to make use of ward committee meetings to raise issues, the meetings begin with an opportunity for them to talk to individual services for up to an hour. It is not then necessary to sit through the whole meeting. Issues can be resolved through this channel but if this is not possible, services complete a form registering the issue or complaint and a copy is given to the resident. On the form the service has to indicate the action that will be taken. The service decides on the timescale involved and this is logged. Progress can be tracked.

This process feeds into the council’s performance management system and is included in the council’s suite of local performance indicators. Indicators introduced include the number of matters of local concern raised, the time taken to resolve them and the numbers of matters registered electronically.

² Local Government Improvement and Development, section on ‘Practical ways to engage your community’ www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=16639575 and People and Participation website www.peopleandparticipation.net To improve the way it deals with issues raised Wiltshire Council launched a web-based system in 2009. The system enables people to submit issues, track the progress of the issue and see the outcome. There is a commitment to resolve and report back on every issue to the person who raised it.

A simple form is available online to submit an issue. It is logged and the community area manager checks to see if the issue is one for the area board to consider. Some issues are better referred to the relevant service provider. A report is then prepared for the board based on information from the person raising the issue, the local councillor and other board members. If the issue is not resolved at the board, the chair will then host roundtable discussions with relevant officers and councillors, town or parish council. Outcomes from this are fed back to the area board and the person raising the issue.

Publicity for the area board meetings and the online issues process is through Just a minute newsletters placed in public places and through e-bulletins sent to online community area networks built up from key community and service delivery contacts. Targeted consultations are carried out around specific issues of concern, including with under-represented groups such as young people, disabled people and people from black and ethnic minority communities.

Those wishing to attend and speak at area boards can do so with the prior agreement of the chair. To reduce barriers to participation the public meetings feature good sound and audio-visual systems and aim to be as interactive as possible, encouraging audience participation and voting on key issues.

Well over 100 issues are referred to the area boards each month. By bringing together council services, public agencies such as the police and National Health Service (NHS) Wiltshire, councillors, parish and town councils and the public, over 50 per cent of these issues have been resolved and local people are able to track the progress on any outstanding issue. Some pointers

- Encourage residents to use online systems to raise issues but recognise that not all residents will be able to access them at present.
- Make it a priority to have in place a publicly available system so that progress can be tracked on issues that have been raised. This is fundamental in evidencing to residents that their issues have been noted and that, where appropriate, action has been taken.
- Review feedback processes regularly to make sure they still work well. Ask residents what they think and how improvements can be made to make these processes more effective.
- Be aware that ‘face-to-face’ contact with services can sometimes resolve issues most directly. Make use of the opportunities presented by area-based meetings to encourage informal ways of providing that contact, such as market stalls for services.

North Tyneside Council is also developing an engagement tracker to go live in September 2010. This will be an online facility to track engagement activities using a database searchable by issue, date, and so on. It will aim to report on what practically has changed as a result of specific engagement activity, completing the feedback loop. In addition, it aims to identify which key strategies and policies these activities will feed into.

Local residents have recently selected between 10 and 12 performance indicators for each of their four area forums, creating an area scorecard. Examples include:

- number of grass cuts scheduled and carried out in the previous quarter
- percentage of streets with widespread litter
- total number of anti-social behaviour incidents which are alcohol related as a proportion of all incidents.

The indicators are being monitored and report backs to the forums will be made regularly. The indicators were selected from a menu and will be reviewed at the end of the first year when residents may want to change them if they are not providing the information they think is important. 4.4 Use of guidance on service planning to reinforce the message

Local authorities operate within an environment that requires plans to be produced at different levels within the organisation. The business planning model which a council adopts will depend on the type of authority and the particular local circumstances.

Planning for the delivery of specific services will form a part of that model. How this is done will depend on how the council organises itself and how it groups its functions. In many cases such plans sit beneath directorate plans and can be referred to as business plans or service plans.

In some authorities they are referred to as service improvement plans. This underlines the expectation that a service will reflect on the feedback received from the people who use it and, if necessary, identify ways to do things differently as a result. The plan will also spell out the priorities for the service in the year(s) ahead.

Services will often be advised on the required contents of these plans by guidelines that are produced by the council’s corporate centre.

For example, Salford City Council has corporate business planning guidance in place for the period 2010-13. Called One council improvement framework, it identifies the customer view as a key driver:

“We shape business planning decisions by what we know about the views of our communities and customers, who are both internal and external to the organisation”

Such corporate guidance will provide a template for the structuring of a plan to ensure a degree of consistency across all council services. The guidance may also clearly state the type of information that should be included in the plan, for example, how the service implements the council’s equality and diversity responsibilities.

Councils have the opportunity to state explicitly in their corporate guidance that services should make clear:

- the results of consultation and engagement activities undertaken within the service, across the council and by partners
- evidence how this has impacted on the service’s priorities for the year(s) ahead and, if necessary,
- demonstrate how service provision will be changed as a result. Some pointers

• Corporate guidance needs to steer the production of service plans to ensure that services make clear the connection between what they have been told by residents and how they intend to respond.

• Such guidance need not be rigid – it should be the result of a dialogue between services and the council’s corporate centre on what constitutes a good plan.

• In the development of service plans value can be added by a service using a wide range of intelligence, including the results of all types of engagement activity in which it has been involved and community intelligence gleaned from any available source.

• Producing corporate guidance on the required content of service plans will not in itself be sufficient - councils may need to ensure that a sign-off process for plans is in place. This process would include monitoring to see that services have complied with the corporate guidelines provided. These pointers draw on a variety of existing good practice within councils. Some local authorities have a long-established commitment to engagement and have processes in place to both engage with their communities and to plan their services at a local level. This will often involve local councillors working with local people who live in those areas. Many councils can be proud of their achievements to date.

However the landscape is rapidly changing and ever more responsive and effective services are being sought. Expectations and aspirations on the part of local communities are getting higher, local authorities are becoming leaner and the expectation of cross-agency working to address complex issues demands a partnership approach if they are to be tackled effectively. Reductions in budgets may prove an additional incentive to redesign services from the perspective of the citizen so that the need for wasteful contact with councils is further reduced. The opportunity to radically improve the relationship between engagement activity, and ways of delivering services within councils and in conjunction with partners, has never been more relevant.

The research for these pointers to good practice has demonstrated that this is not easy. Success is sometimes more dependant on the quality and drive of individual officers and members who make things happen, rather than on organisational structures. Corporately produced directives and guidance for services, for example, are of limited value if service managers themselves do not understand the value and benefits of engagement. But it is evident that when commitment levels are high there are clear advantages to be secured in engaging local people, not only in helping determine local priorities but also in identifying new and improved ways of delivering their vital local services. Such input will pay dividends, both in building the reputation of local services, and in helping address the major challenges that lie ahead for the public sector. We would like to thank those who have contributed to this guide and who have provided material for the case studies:

Braintree District Council Jan Cole Newcastle City Council Bryan Beverley North Tyneside Council Anne Foreman Davina Brain Salford City Council Gareth Wilkinson West Berkshire Council Jo Naylor Wiltshire Council Julie Ann Martin